Employment law advice is legal guidance on your rights and obligations in the workplace — covering everything from discrimination and harassment to wage disputes, severance agreements, and wrongful termination. You need it the moment something feels wrong at work: when HR asks you to sign a document, when you’re passed over for promotion after reporting misconduct, when your paycheck doesn’t match your hours, or when you’re terminated under circumstances that don’t add up. Early advice shapes every decision that follows — and costs you nothing at Checkmate Law.

California employment law provides significantly broader protections for workers than federal law in several key areas. The California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) covers employers with five or more employees — compared to federal law’s threshold of 15. California’s anti-discrimination protections extend to more characteristics, including sexual orientation, gender identity, and political affiliation. California’s wage and hour laws mandate daily overtime after eight hours worked, stricter meal and rest break requirements, and harsher penalties for violations. In most situations, California employees are better served filing under state law than federal law — but both may apply simultaneously.

An EEOC lawyer is an employment attorney who handles charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — the federal agency that enforces anti-discrimination laws including Title VII, the ADA, and the ADEA. Filing an EEOC charge is a prerequisite for most federal discrimination lawsuits. While you are not required to have an attorney to file a charge, the EEOC process involves legal strategy decisions that affect your eventual lawsuit: what claims to include, what evidence to preserve, and how to respond to the employer’s position statement. An experienced EEOC lawyer ensures nothing is waived and your case is positioned for maximum recovery from the start.

To pursue a discrimination or harassment claim under California FEHA, you must file a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department within three years of the last act of discrimination. For federal claims under Title VII, you have 300 days from the discriminatory act to file an EEOC charge. These deadlines are strict and non-waivable — missing them permanently bars your claim regardless of how strong the underlying facts are. Separate deadlines apply to wage claims, whistleblower retaliation, and PAGA actions. Do not wait to find out which window governs your situation.

No. Retaliating against an employee for reporting harassment, discrimination, or other protected conduct is independently unlawful under both California FEHA and Labor Code § 1102.5. If you reported misconduct and were subsequently terminated, demoted, reassigned, or subjected to a hostile work environment, that sequence of events can form the basis of a retaliation claim — even if the underlying discrimination claim is disputed. The timing of the adverse action relative to the complaint is often the most powerful evidence in a retaliation case.

Not before having an attorney review it. Severance agreements typically contain broad releases of all legal claims — meaning you waive your right to sue for discrimination, harassment, wage theft, or wrongful termination in exchange for a payment. If you have viable legal claims, the payment you’re being offered may be a fraction of what you could recover. Under California law, you generally have 21 days to consider a severance offer and 7 days to revoke after signing. A free consultation with Checkmate Law costs nothing and gives you the information you need to make that decision.

Many workers classified as independent contractors are actually employees under California law. California applies the ABC test under AB 5 to determine worker classification — and the bar for treating a worker as a contractor is high. Misclassified workers are denied overtime pay, meal and rest break protections, workers’ compensation, and unemployment insurance they are legally entitled to. If you have been classified as a contractor but work under conditions more consistent with employment, you may have a misclassification claim.

Nothing upfront. Checkmate Law handles employment cases on a contingency fee basis — you pay no legal fees unless we recover compensation for you. In many employment cases, including discrimination and harassment claims, the employer is also required to pay attorney’s fees if you prevail under California’s fee-shifting statutes. There is no financial risk to consulting us, retaining us, or taking your case all the way through trial.